Friends Are Not Food
by angelicakes
Summary: Now, under these circumstances, Pit was pretty much doomed to the fate he remembered as vegetablism. No, not vegetarianism. That was something quite different, you see; you don’t eat the vegetables in vegetablism. You become them.


**And here I am. Writing fanfiction again. Can I get a hand? Some pizzaz? Awesome amounts of applause? Thanks. I love you too.**

**Anyway, this here is a story that is a few chapters long. It is lighthearted and contains an eggplant. Oooh. The story's getting exciting already. This eggplant remains anonymous until you read the story, no matter how much you may already know about its little secret. Over half of you are chuckling over the prospect as we know it. I sure am.**

**So, I hope you enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed writing, and if I made you laugh or smile at least once, then I have accomplished my mission. I think I will start responding to reviewers just to give it more of a personal touch. You like personal touches. Ohh~ really now?**

**Let's begin.**

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__Shink! Whoosh! Bam! Kerplunk! Ping! Bzzzzzzzshooooom! _All the noises of a typical brawl session played through the air as a few participants duked it out in the training arena. Mr. Saturn flew. Super scopes were shot. And most importantly, Pokéballs were hurled over people's heads and split open to reveal the form of a Pokémon at random convenience to whoever threw it. Weapons clashed. Legs sprawled across the floor and fists exploded. It was a complete knock-out.

Once upon a time, Pit, Ness, Link, and the Pokémon Trainer were holding a practice match pretty much for the hell of it. That and they had run dry of everything else under the sun, from poking R.O.B with a stick to figuring out who could sneak into Snake's room first without being noticed by the expert in espionage himself. Thus, here they were throwing things at each other.

"Think fast, Ness!" Pit chucked a pitfall at the unsuspecting kid, and in the flash of an instant he was sucked into a depression that spread out across a section of the arena's floor. Since he was stuck, Ivysaur took this opportunity to vine whip the daylights out of him. While Pit laughed, Link seized the angel with his clawshot and reeled him close. With the winged fighter's white exomus in his fist, he kneed him once in the gut before discarding him. As he slashed with his sword, Pit thrust his weapon out too and a spark of indocile steel screeched at the collision. Fire ignited in the warriors' eyes.

Ness had to interfere with their short clash. A thick length of baseball-smacking wood smashed into their fighting space, which crushed Pit's body under its weight but left Link rolling out of the way, since he could see the psychic emerge from Pit's backside.

"That's for messing with me!" Ness taunted, pointing a finger at a grounded Pit.

"I'd watch out if I were you!"

"Huh?" Ivysaur's vine whips snaked out to wipe Ness clear off his sneakers and onto his side, a startled wail emitting from the teen as he ungracefully met the floor. Pit had his turn to laugh again as he collected himself from the unforgiving ground.

A trophy! While the three were engaged in their heated scuffle, Link grabbed this opportunity and hurled his body in the direction of the unrecognizable trophy that exuded eerie white light. Meters away, he stole it from its position on the Astroturf and pressed it to the air, inciting it to shatter from its glass case and unleash a mini terror that hailed from only Master Hand knows where.

Expecting perhaps a pair of ferocious flying girls named Kat and Ana or even Tingle, as experience had taught Link, an odd purple glob made its appearance instead, cloaked in clothes that reminded the swordsman of a monk or a sage. Well, he'd certainly never seen something like this before. By now he was used to the usual row of assist trophies that had the tendency to pop out of nowhere.

It wasn't Isaac from Golden Sun. It certainly wasn't Andross from Star Fox. So what was this peculiar intruder? And what was he going to do with that vegetable-shaped staff of his?

"What in-." That was all Link could really say about this odd one-eyed fiend. His fellow combatants rounded their heads about to embark their eyes upon just what exactly Link felt so astonished about.

"Is that a…?" came Ness with a scratch of his head.

Red too was confused, albeit slightly. Maybe he'd missed something when it came to assist trophies? "Huh?" Ivysaur too failed to recognize this alien creature. He grunted inquiringly.

As for Pit, his eyes popped open and his jaw sprung wide. His nerves froze and thoughts zipped to a steady numb state. The pupils of his eyes dilated in a growing fear of the horrible monster before them, which proceeded to reveal the hidden object buried inside his gaping sleeves. An… eggplant! An eggplant!

Oh horror! This couldn't be happening!

"Ah, ah, ah-" Pit sputtered, his breath squirting out like the final gasps of a dying engine. "You're kidding me!"

All other smashers could not comprehend the urgency of this situation as well as Pit could, but they were prepared to whiz away in all directions to avoid this foreign assist trophy. The angel's wings froze stiff, and his limbs swiftly followed. Link caught on to Pit's unnatural fear and immediately wished he hadn't thrown that trophy.

"Pit? Is something the matter?" His eyes pitched into inquisitive orbs.

"Th-that's a… an eggplant wizard!"

"A what?"

"How did it get _here_?" Gulp.

Now, under these circumstances, Pit was pretty much doomed to the fate he remembered as vegetablism. No, not vegetarianism. That was something quite different, you see; you don't _eat _thevegetables in vegetablism.

You become them.

Link had the mind to question what in the universe's deepest innermost bowels an eggplant wizard did. It certainly liked to present itself as a threat. But something was a little queer about the whole ordeal. He was almost positive this eggplant wizard guy intended to use the staff he was holding as a means of weaponry, but instead here he was pulling eggplants from his sleeves. Sure, vegetables could be used as potential projectiles, but when did they ever _do _anything? If he were going to use a vegetable, why not use something a little heavier, like a pumpkin? Better yet, he could nail enemies with fruit if he so pleased. Watermelons were also quite beastly on the weight scale. So w_hy _was he prepared to hurl eggplants?

The question crawled out of Link's lips. "What does it… do?" The eggplant wizard hurled his veggie at the trembling angel and cackled at his devious maneuver.

Ready to flee from the swinging bullet, Pit garbled like a frantic typewriter. "They throw eggplants at you and-!" Palutena's loyal angel vanished into thin air. All that remained was the eggplant that had stopped him in his tracks.

Everything ceased.

"Oh my God, where'd he go?" Ness cried in a panic. He had to rush backwards to the place Pit originally stood, but there was no more. Link, Red, and Ivysaur were equally shaken.

Where Pit had been, there was eggplant. Nothing but a still food item that could be used in various Mediterranean and Asian dishes. The eggplant wizard too had departed. One thing was assured, though: this match was done in. The group of four eased in to crowd around the purple vegetable, half expecting a miracle to pop from the very air itself. But nothing happened, and Pit wasn't coming back. A thick fog of heavy tension hovered amid his friends who awaited his presence with uptight breath.

Red straightened up and fixed his cap. "He's gone. Just like that."

"Where did he go?" wondered Ness, dismissing his inclination as Red had. His eyes climbed the ceiling as though he could somehow spot the nonexistent angel.

A lump wormed its way into Link's throat. What was Pit saying, anyway? Whatever it was, this moment proved it to be quite critical.

"Ivy!" Several feet away, the green plant Pokémon was in the process of unraveling a discovery. The humans swerved around with eager eyes.

"What is it, Ivysaur?" The Pokémon Trainer rushed to his side, awaiting the cause for excitement. As his hand brushed the Ivysaur's head, he too noticed what his Pokémon had deduced. There was an identical eggplant scattered at the edge of the arena, unnoticed beforehand.

The other smashers clamored up beside him to check the scene out. Another eggplant. "But…I thought…" Ness mulled with his neck circling about to catch sight of the previous eggplant they left alone. Ivysaur's vines slithered out from beneath the pink flowering plant that rested atop his backside and reached for the vegetable, cradling it delicately between those plantlike appendages. Their hearts plunged off a hundred-foot tower made of Peril.

"You don't mean-" Link was shocked into brief wordlessness. That would be terrible, and the effects would be a regular tangle of a mess to sort out if he ever wanted to see his angel friend restored to the Pit he was most familiar with.

A tangible understanding connected the fighters into one mental realm. Yes. If it made any sense at all, Pit was probably… an eggplant? Actually, that didn't make a lick of sense whatsoever.

"Are you trying to say that's Pit, Ivysaur?" Red inquired, inclining closer as he spoke.

Crimson eyes stared the vegetable deep into its very seeds. A shake of Ivysaur's head told the rest of the smashers an affirmative no. Heartbeats hammered.

"Then… where is he?" Ness wanted to know.

Ivysaur chucked the eggplant and forced it to slam against the wall. With a few steps, he turned steadily to face the direction of the other eggplant. "Saa." "_There."_

So Pit was an eggplant? Well, they assumed Ivysaur knew his vegetables, considering he was the closest one here to actually being one himself. With that in mind, they ventured over to the quiet object that was supposedly Pit. Silently it lay there without any indication of animate life.

"Does that mean he's dead?" Ness wondered aloud.

"Shh," Link demanded sharply, even though sealed lips weren't going to do much good in this scenario. He didn't like to think about such a morbid possibility.

"Well, think about it! Eggplants don't have brains, so they're technically not aware that they even exist at all."

They stared. If this purple lump proved indeed to be Pit, then what on earth did he have concerning valid thought process? Did he have any awareness whatsoever? After all, if Pit the eggplant really did have mental capabilities in this state, then it was disturbing to think about other vegetables possessing similar abilities. All of a sudden, that orange Ness ate this morning failed to be as tangy and juicy as it once had, and the corn Red ate last night suddenly had disagreeable feelings about being chomped on by giant rows of teeth. That was mere speculation, of course; if vegetables had minds, surely they would protest to the notion of being digested.

The moments spent staring at this hypothesized "Pit" rocked by, and still no sign of white wings and bizarre sandalboots. Link bent down to remove "Pit" from his grave of astroturf. Because there was the possibility that this vegetable was his friend, he cradled it carefully, not wanting to bruise the plant product's flesh in any way shape or form. The other smashers closed in on the Hylian like sleepy buttercup petals.

"…Well, I suppose we should… take him somewhere else," Link suggested with a weird face. "We can call the match a draw."

Everyone understood the logic of this plan and dogged after Link, their pace caught in a flighty drag. After all, it wasn't an everyday occurrence that your friend turned into an eggplant. The training arena deserted, these combatants wandered vast halls with no absolute sense of destination, the smashers cast astray in their thoughts about the recent occurrence. They passed by a certain hedgehog who waved as they crossed paths. Sonic then proceeded to have confused thoughts about why Link was holding an eggplant close to his shoulder. He shrugged it off.

Red was the one who first interrupted the buzz of silence. "So, uhm… what exactly are you planning to do with him?" The Pokémon Trainer clearly had no clue what to do about a vegetable friend either.

Link couldn't respond. Frankly, neither did he. His face withheld the same stolid expression it had minutes ago.

The group eventually wound up in the kitchen on the second floor. Each floor of the mansion contained sets of rooms relatively similar to that of a hotel's. Three floors housed approximately 10 of those rooms and some other accommodations, like kitchens and bathrooms and recreational spans. Light filtered in from the afternoon skyline and drenched the marble counters with a tame glow. Link didn't know for certain the reason he set foot into the kitchen of all places; he figured it might have had to do with the fact that Pit was a vegetable. There was no way he was going to chop him up and sauté the poor angel—_eggplant_-- in a saucepan over medium heat. This is what caused the blonde to rethink the morbidity of his coming to the kitchen over any other place, so he just about turned around.

"What _are _you doing, Link?" Ness pressed the pirouetting young man. His face was covered with lines of perplexity.

"I don't know," was his answer. He stopped in the doorway.

………

"Okay, so now what?"

It took a moment for Link to respond once more. "Well, what would you do? I haven't the slightest clue. I went into the kitchen for reasons I can't explain and now I find that I really am wandering the place aimlessly." He looked at Pit in his arms and a crease of worry etched its way onto his face. "Have you ever undone an eggplant curse?"

"Well, no…"

"_Maybe you came into the kitchen because Pit made you hungry." _Ivysaur's witty suggestion.

Link frowned as though peahats were circling his head high above. Red chucked a Pokeball at Ivysaur and he was a problem no more.

Ness's mouth slanted a little. "Maaaaaaaybe not."

Red took a seat on the stool perched next to the island counter in the center of the kitchen. "Well, since we're fresh out of ideas, let's cook something up. Uh- ideas, that is," he restated after catching sight of the horrified expressions near the doorway. Yeesh, touchy bunch, they.

"Kay. I'm up for that," the psychic boy agreed. He dashed for a stool next to the Pokémon Trainer and crawled on top of it. A grin directed towards the other boy broke out and they both wound up smiling.

Since those two overruled him and he considered their plan a good one, Link submitted and retrieved a stool from near the garbage can. Placing Pit on the seat of the stool temporarily, he dragged the legs a bit on the polished granite tile until he seized the chair up and carried it, then plunked it down across from Red. Pit wobbled from the impact. Link scooped him up and set him gently on the counter in front of him. At last, he sat down and all of their eyes met. Then, they swooped down to peer at the violet vegetable of discussion.

"Meeting in session," Ness started with an official and remarkably judicial air. He patted the table with the palm of his hand. Pit rattled. "And I have something I should add to the table of discussion." His body seemed to rise taller. "Let's start with a what-if. What if Pit never actually turned into an eggplant and he's wandering around up there lost?"

"Uh… up where?" Link had to inquire.

"The training room, of course." He gave a nod. "And I kind of hope so. Because… what the _heck _are we gonna do about… about this!" His finger shot in the direction of the inanimate Pit.

Red said, "That's what we want to sort out."

"I'm beat. I can't think of anything that will reverse this." And with that, Ness frowned out of shame.

"That eggplant wizard guy…" Link mused. "I doubt he'd want to reverse it. I don't know anything about it, but Pit seemed to. He was horrified." Ugh, it was atrocious. The way they spoke of their angel friend was as if he weren't even here. His stomach felt as though a stone had descended to the very pit of it. He didn't vanish into nothing! He was right here! Wow, that was hard to believe. Maybe this was just a bad dream he needed to snap out of. Really soon.

"Yeah… what was up with that? I've never seen that assist trophy character in my life!" the Pokémon Trainer mentioned with suspicious eyebrows.

"Me neither," Ness verified.

"Could it be a glitch?" Link wondered. His hand rested atop the surface of the counter. "Typically, Master Hand doesn't slip in additional trophies…"

"What if he suddenly decided to add to his collection?" Ness hypothesized.

"Guys, it doesn't matter how it happened- it did," Red advised. "And we're trying to figure out how to undo this."

There spawned a fresh heap of silence that twisted through the air after those words. Their minds were successfully blocked by wrought iron gates fashioned from their incapability of fathoming the scenario correctly. Unfortunately, if Pit was ever to flap his wings again, he'd need to rely on this bunch if he even wanted to say something about his predicament. But no, there he lay, a wordless heap of bitter food. Never before had Pit been this boring.

The conversations proceeded, but none of the three could formulate a reliable conclusion, and nothing close to a stable enough plan of action. This rolled on for at least twenty minutes.

"Welp." Ness stretched and yawned. "I'm gonna go hit the library. Maybe there's something there I can find out about this. Internet knows all."

Red rose to his feet and concurred with Ness's idea. "Yeah. I'm with him. Maybe you should watch over Pit while we're gone."

Link accepted this proposal and decided to stay here instead of immersing himself on a quest for information like the other two. "When you find something out, look for me. I'll watch after Pit while you two research."

"Sure thing!" they chimed in unison before zapping off on a trail for the library, their footsteps clopping away on the kitchen tile until they hit carpet and the noise died. Link meanwhile propped the eggplant up on its base and simply stared, the moment coiling around him snugly. Here he sat, granted with the task of babysitting an eggplant indulged by the soul of his friend. When it boiled down to it, this shouldn't be too tricky a job. He poked Pit with his gloved finger and smiled. His finger ran a line down the surface as he spoke. "Hey. You in there?"

Oh, Link Link Link… you're not thinking hard enough, I'm afraid. Life is never easy when you're forced to share a mansion with a variety of colossal buffoons and crazy characters, especially when over half of them are itching for conflict.

Meanwhile, a pair of children donning thick identical parkas save for the color marched in unison. Call it divine mechanism, a twist of fate, or simply the amusement of a pitiless, godlike author musing with his or her puppet strings, but these Eskimos happened to be pouting over the evident lack of eggplants in this gigantic house. Here they come! Faces swollen with dissatisfaction and cleated shoes dragging like tired donkeys lagging spring carts behind them: this was the very picture of a bad day coupled with a dire requirement for a particular source of nourishment.

A complaint surfaced from the boy dressed in sky blue. "Aw man! How could she!"

"It's not like we're doing anything wrong…"

"So what if I had five? And so what if it costs money?" the boy named Popo huffed. "We live in a _mansion!_We're supposed to have money spewing out of our ears, so we can afford all the eggplants we want!" He leaned over the railing of the sundeck disparagingly. Nana copied him.

"Yeah!" her soft kitten-like voice obliged.

"This is the only time I'm gonna say it, but Peach is being a dummy!"

"Yeah!"

"And she thinks she can take them away from us! I didn't even get six! Usually I get six! And we didn't even eat any today!" An angry little noise wormed its way from within his throat. "This blows! And I'm hungry!"

Nana, although she too adored the taste of eggplants in any given recipe, offered her insight. "Well… we could always make a sandwich."

The eyes of her companion contorted into a bull's fiery gaze as his head snapped in her direction. Nana had to retreat a step with her expression aghast. "What was that? Make a _sandwich?_" She could have sworn she had heard the inkling of a snarl, but that could have just been a dying bird. "We are the Ice Climbers! When somebody takes our rights away, we fight for it! We can climb over any obstacle in our way, even if it means knocking Peach off our path!" Nana wasn't so sure about hurting the caring and kindhearted princess just to get an eggplant, but she allowed Popo to continue; he was being scary anyway. "If I want an eggplant, then by my name I'll GET an eggplant!" To make this sound much more certified, he pounded the wood on the railing with his fist. "Are you with me?"

The pink-clad girl nodded and smiled. "Yes! I'm always with you!"

"Then together, we'll scale this confounded problem and seize our rights back! Rectify the wrongdoings! And most of all- eat eggplants again!" Their arms raised and their hands touched in a kind of salute. "Eggplants for everyone!"

A nasty growl shook the air. For a hanging moment, they stopped, eyeballs darting every which way to figure out the source of this horrible noise. It spoke. "Shut _up!_ Or I'll kick your butts so hard you'll find yourselves back in Subspace!"

They giggled. It was just Bowser. He was probably in the pool.

So, with their pledge held high in their hearts, the Ice Climbers departed in search of eggplants and Justice.


End file.
